Call for volunteers - Anyone available as proctor?

Hi all. In an effort to provide members based in Europe with an opportunity to sit a certification exam on their side of the pond, we would like to try to organize a sitting in Italy, sometime next Spring.

I am currently abroad, therefore I would like to ask *certified* members who live in Italy if any of you is willing to act as proctor for the test.All it takes is a bit of organization to find a proper venue, and then a half day - normally a Saturday morning - for the actual exam day.

If you are in a city that is reasonably well connected by public transportation (train, an international airport within 100 km or so, buses, etc.) and would like to help out, please contact me and I will provide you with all the details.

The $10,000 Raiziss/de Palchi Book Prize is given for the translation into
English of a significant work of modern Italian poetry. Publishers may
submit books published anytime in the past (not necessarily in 2013), but
only books by living translators of standard (non-dialect) Italian are
eligible. Self-published collections do not qualify.

Organized by the Università per Stranieri di Siena, this one day
conference aims to bring together - under the umbrella of Intercultural
Communication Studies and Audiovisual Translation Studies - researchers
who are particularly sensitive to cross-cultural issues in subtitling.
The conference aims to explore key concerns associated with subtitling
and intercultural communication with a particular focus on European
languages such as English, German, Italian and Spanish, in order to
promote the cross-fertilization of practices, ideas and theoretical
approaches.
The idea to investigate subtitling from an intercultural perspective,
and also with reference to language teaching, is due to the fact that
the Università per Stranieri di Siena, the promoter of this initiative,
has been actively engaged for many years in these areas of research. In
addition to this, recent studies have correlated the relevance of new
technologies (of which subtitling is an example) with language
learning, creating new scenarios which involve an increasing number of
people with different languages and cultures. Other subject areas have
developed an interest in subtitling: from translation studies to
linguistics to studies on communication for the deaf and hard of
hearing.
The purpose of the conference is therefore to gather scholars of
various disciplines who share a common interest for the phenomena under
analysis, in order to discuss these specific research topics:
1) subtitles for language learners;
2) subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing;
3) fansubbing and/or/versus professional subtitling.

The conference will address key questions which have been raised by
audiovisual translation, language teaching and intercultural
communication studies, with the aim of enlarging borders and enriching
past representations.
Official languages of the conference: Italian and English.

Why pain is expressed differently in different languages Pain is universal. Its expression is not. By James Harbeck

Bang! "Ow!"

You probably have some idea of what just happened there. A collision or explosion of some kind, or perhaps a gunshot. Then someone voicing sharp pain, but probably not excruciating or fatal.

Now consider this: If we were speaking a language other than English, how would that sound?

The loud noise would be the same loud noise. But even if the noise was identical, the word used to represent the noise would not be the same everywhere.

We know what kind of noise "Bang!" represents: one with a sharp onset and some short reverb that often leaves a briefly lingering effect on the ears. It's made by a normal-sized thing, smaller or less hollow than "Boom!" but bigger and not as hard as "Ping!" You might expect similarity in representation from language to language, with differences due only to the sound systems of the different languages.

And that's generally what we get, although in many languages the standard word leans toward the "boom" side. Is it that bigger or hollower objects are generally involved in loud sounds, or just different cultural expectations? It varies.

In a few languages, it's at least nearly the same as in English — Dutch has pang and boem (pronounced "boom"), Danish has bang and bum (said "boom," as in other languages too), German has peng and bum, Italian has bang, bum, and pum, Spanish has bang and pum, Swedish has pang, bang, and bom, Vietnamese has pằng, and Mandarin has pēng (which sounds like English "pung"). Quite a few other languages have a "boom" word but no "bang" equivalent. In some languages, such as some from southern India, a "d" sound is used in place of the "b," but the rest is still a low or back vowel followed by a "m" or "ng" sound.

16-19 January 2014
Medical Interpreter Education: The Gateway to the Future!
2014 International Medical Interpreters Conference
Houston, TX USA
Medical interpretation is a very specialized field that has evolved
over time into the fastest growing specialization of interpreting
practice.
The overriding mission of this conference is to offer an international
forum to showcase the latest developments in the field, to investigate
its opportunities and challenges, and to advance the quality in
services provided to language minority patients worldwide.
We encourage innovative ideas for presentations and activities that
support the thematic questions of the conference.The format of the conference is grounded in professional networking and
workshop sessions that maximize audience participation, complemented by
interactive plenary sessions on key professional issues. IMIA provides
a forum for new and well-established experts in the field to develop
their work side by side. This conference seeks to facilitate learning
as an ongoing, dynamic and social process, and strives to offer
engaging sessions in which diverse participants can form bonds,
participate as learners and teachers, and feel integral to the learning
process.

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